The Shards Of Hope
by Calumongal
Summary: My first fanfic, but you won't be dissapointed. Lori is from another dimension, and about to become a digimon tamer. Any questions? Will include, as the story progresses, Takato, Henry, Rika and all of their digimon. You know the drill, R&R please.


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Author's Note (for those who read these things *I recommend it*): "The Shards of Hope" and all other "Shards of Hope" related stories take place in a universe alternate to that of Digimon Tamers. This Fic itself (for those that are picky), occurs at the point in which all of the tamers have first entered the digital world and get separated, and shortly after Impmon makes a pact with Catsuramon, the dog deva. In the "Shards" universe, neither the tamers or the digidestined are real (just like our universe), but there will be a crossover in this fic to the tamer's universe. Also, Century, Oregon is not a real city. But the city it is based on, Ashland, Oregon, does indeed exist. The city is depicted here much like the real one , but I wanted to change some things too, and so chose to invent my own city instead. Sooooo….please give me a review and let me know what you think. I'd be happy to hear what you have to say, but remember, constructive criticism is welcome, flames are not.  
  
Disclaimer: Ok, since I have to do this thing - I'm gonna make it worth your while. *Hides Impmon in her backpack* Digimon is not owned by me, never has been, and never will be. Neither is anything herefore stated, such as the quotes at the beginning of chapters, or any songs herein (those that you know I haven't invented, of course!). *Tries to fend off disclaimer dudes from taking her backpack* All digimon names, themes and references are the exclusive rights of Toei Entertainment in Japan, and Fox , Saban and Disney in the US. *Cries as they take Impmon away, along with her writers notebook*. Therefore, I give them and all of their staff the foundation credits , and the thanks that that I can build my own fic on top of these. *Grabs Impmon back, along with her writers notebook, hugs him tight, and runs away laughing gleefully.* Oh, by the way, please don't sue me, I'm not working right now…so all I have is a half-wolf dog with very sharp fangs, and I don't think you would want her.   
  
Oh, and these little marks, 'and' mean it's a thought in the character's head. Just thought I'd mention it, you'll get the idea....   
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The Shards of Hope : A Digimon Odyssey  
  
Part 1  
  
Chapter One: Supernatural Soliciting  
  
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.  
-Henry David Thoreau  
  
That's right, I've realized it, I forgot to do my homework   
That's one puzzle, puzzle, puzzle, "Who am I?"   
-The Biggest Dreamer, translation  
  
  
It was just another Monday in a long line of bad Mondays.  
  
You wouldn't have realized this from the weather. All across the rustling, damp swath of the Pacific Northwest the sky had turned from a dull, thunderhead gray to a gleaming golden haze practically overnight. The constant patter of cold winter rain and the chink-chink of hail on windows had vanished for the moment, the sun finally clipping the rolling, far-maintained horizon triumphantly.  
  
Nothing would have kept this morning from happening either. The burning golden disk spread its rays out softly, as if hesitating in the wake of such dark winter harshness. Its subtle warmth and light hit the wind-swept valleys of Oregon and between, losing itself somewhere within the cold, gray steel of Redding, California.  
  
The fact that it had managed all this was pretty much meaningless; most people weren't looking out their windows at four in the morning to see the sun's next round of peek-a-boo, nor did those who saw it on that day really care.  
  
Neither is most of where the sun touched that morning important in itself - except for the "between" part, which would seem most unlikely on such a Monday morning as the one presently chosen. But it was about to make all the difference.  
  
The "between" includes a small town called Century, Oregon, a place that has become as unique as those that presently live there. It is well-known for it's summer acting festivals, Shakespearian architecture, and high prices. In fact, it was the most unlikely location for an apocalyptic Armageddon that the world had ever seen.  
  
This winter it was also deserted quite a bit more then was considered normal. Most of the residents had gone outside for acting jobs at a bard's fair in Portland, leaving the streets bare and quiet.  
  
Therefore, most people missed an event that was probably more important then the invention of microwave popcorn, though not as tasty. An event that people, as they often do, would misinterpret, exaggerate and generally mix up for years to come. An event that….well, you get the idea anyway…  
  
So, naturally, like in all good stories, there was one person in the town of Century who could care less about the fact that her entire life would hinge on this event.  
  
She was just trying to get through middle school.  
  
  
"Loretta, if you don't get down here right now, you're going to be arriving to school in your underwear, you hear me!"  
  
Loretta sat bolt upright in bed, and glanced over at the alarm clock.  
  
'What the.... it's seven-fifteen! Holy-- '  
  
"Loretta, I'm coming up the stairs - you better be out of bed young lady."  
  
Loretta glanced in the direction of her closed bedroom door and sighed. Outside of her pine paneled door, her seeming blockade from the rest of the world, and down the stairs her mother's frustrated footfalls echoed in the hall. With a reluctant look at her pillow she pulled her patchwork comforter aside and slipped out of bed.  
  
The first thing she reached for were her glasses, shoved onto her nightstand after last night's homework frustration. Their ruby-red rims glinted from a single shaft of sun that had managed to worm it's way through a crack in her window shade, but she didn't notice.  
  
She was far too busy trying to make it look like she had been getting ready. It was too late to put any contacts in this morning, so she left the glasses on her nose and rooted around in her sock drawer until she found an actual pair of socks. Just as she was stumbling into them her mom pushed open the door.  
  
"What are you doing?! You have less than five minutes to get that butt of yours out the door or you'll be walking into class after the bell!"  
  
Loretta rolled her eyes.  
  
"Are you listening to me young lady, because I thought I saw--"  
  
"Right away Mother--."  
  
"NOW!"  
  
"I'm going, I'm going! Jeez, don't have a calf…."  
  
"Her mother left the bedroom with a sigh of frustration, and swept back down the stairs to finish preparing breakfast for her husband, and Loretta's father, Mr. Lyn. Loretta had always thought the last name odd herself, as she was just an everyday white girl, but everyone always asked her if that name was Chinese or something, which she really, seriously doubted. All of her ancestors had come from Idaho. And they had been merchants for gosh sakes, not even potato farmers!  
  
Grumbling to herself again about how early she always had to get up, Loretta opened another one of her dresser drawers, and pulled out a black shirt with a digimon, Veemon actually, printed on the front. With a sigh she gave up, took off her flannel pajamas and slipped her shirt on, looking for a pair of jeans as she did so.  
  
……..Which reminded her for some off reason of the kids that thought her last name was Japanese. That was always her favorite turn of events, name-wise, because then she could throw something in about Digimon somehow. She liked to see their faces when she started talking about digital monsters. Some kinds couldn't stand it, but others just wanted to talk and talk and talk about them. She just couldn't get them to shut up.  
  
With a faint smile at the thought of her two best friends, Jess and Eric, who played the card game furiously, waiting for her on the curb, and hurried a little faster. She pulled her Spanish book off of her nightstand and headed for the door, taking the stairs, when she reached them, two at a time without even thinking about it.  
  
At the bottom of the stairs she turned right, away from her parents' bedroom door to her left, and started for the dividing area between the living room and the dining room. Breakfast must have been served while she dressed because she could see her father's broad back and blue pinstriped work shirt facing her from the breakfast table down the hall, telling her that he was almost ready to leave too. He always ate breakfast last, like she did.  
  
She could smell the welcoming aroma of ham and still warm, buttered bread - but she didn't have time for any of it. She was already running further behind now then when she had struggled to regain consciousness this morning.  
  
With the dramatic air of someone going some place they hate she clomped out into the dining room and leaned slightly over when she reached her father's chair, kissing him on the cheek.  
  
She felt like she was forgetting something.   
  
"See ya Daddy."  
  
"Bye angel." He planted a kiss on one of her cheeks as well. "Oh, is Nat getting up yet?"  
  
Nat, or Natalina was Loretta's ten-year-old sister, and the fashion and chocolate queen of the universe. Actually, Loretta had three sisters, Nat was just the middle child, and there was Shazi, or Shayana, the youngest and only eight. Then….there was Tanya, the oldest. But she had been out of the house for quite a while now and none of her younger siblings knew quite what to think of her even after all these years.  
  
"Daddy, they go to the elementary school, and that isn't for another hour and a half. Do you seriously think they're going to get up half an hour early when they don't have to - I wouldn't anyway."  
  
Her father chuckled and mussed her hair affectionately.  
  
"Ya, but she wanted me to copy something for her before I went down to the lab…"  
  
Loretta shrugged her shoulders and turned for the hall again, remembering what she had forgotten.  
  
"Lori, you gonna eat something?" Her mother poked her head around the side of the cabinets in their walk-in kitchen., still in her bathrobe, and Loretta paused mid-step in half-expectance, then continued back toward the hallway.  
  
"Nah, I'm just gonna hit the bathroom, put on a little blush and then take my act on the road. I'll just use that money I have left from my allowance yesterday and buy a Pop Tart or something out of the machines at school."  
  
"Yes well-"  
  
Her mother never did get to finish, Loretta was only half awake as it was, and the half that was awake shut the bathroom door behind her too soon to hear even the first word.  
  
  
"Mom, I'm go'in," Loretta called down the hall as she swung her backpack over one shoulder, her other hand on the front door knob. She glanced back at her parents' room.  
  
Mrs. Lyn came out of her bedroom, still in her bathrobe but with a clear conscience on the prospect of making her bed, and made her way to her - now eldest, daughter in the house.  
  
"See you tonight," she planted a soft kiss on Loretta's cheek and the young girl reached up on her tip-toes to do the same while her mother was still bent over.  
  
"Yep, I'll be home early today because it's report card day, remember?"  
  
She was hoping not to bring up the subject of grades this early in the morning, but the prospect of two and a half extra hours of free time that afternoon was too much.  
  
Her mom gave her one of those decidedly "mother" looks. "Yes, and I'm sure your father and I will have every reason to be proud of you."  
  
'Fat chance, not like that's gonna happen in a billion years.'  
  
She tried to push the negative thoughts away - but when the negative thoughts are right, what do you do?  
  
"Yeah Mom, sure."  
  
"Loretta Alice Lyn-"  
  
"Um, yeah Mom, bye, love you."  
  
Loretta hastily opened the front door and scooted out, realizing that perhaps school was better then a mothers' wrath after all.  
  
"Oh," her mother sighed, looking after her. "I do love you Loretta, sweetie, though sometimes…ah, I'll see you at twelve-thirty. I'll make sure I bring you something to eat at home from Subway or something, since you won't be having lunch at school today."  
  
Mrs. Lyn watched her daughter jump off the landing of their front porch, totally ignoring the fact that there were stairs only a few feet from her. At this, a faint smile crossed the older woman's face as Loretta bolted across the dew-soaked grass in their front porch and stomped whole-heartedly in the first mud puddle she saw.  
  
Yes, she was a wonderful, sweet person for so many people - but she had that wild need that the other woman recognized as her own. A silent simple wildness that hid itself beneath a life of warmth and secrets.  
  
A wild place in her heart that let itself go when she was alone, and would one day take flight and mingle with all that she was.  
  
* * *  
  
"Lori, where you go'in on a day like this?!"  
  
Loretta spun around and kept walking rapidly, but backwards now. Behind her, closing in fast, Eric dashed up, followed in hot pursuit by Jess.  
  
Silently, she felt herself becoming annoyed at their arrival. They were her best friends, yes, but she was still late now and she didn't have any time to gab about totally pointless junk like they always did.  
  
"Hey," Jess added, shaking the dew from the hip-length brunette braid that ran down her back, "give up, there's no way you're walking three miles in five minutes."  
  
"Can too! Just watch me - I can run it!"  
  
"Not if you were Bobby Flesher, top runner for the high school cross-country team. Just give it up and come hang, it's a short day anyway, not like the teachers will have any time to give us any groundbreaking info or something." She shrugged her shoulders with a smirk and looked over at Eric.  
  
"Isn't that, um, called "skipping" where we come from guys?" Lori teased, then looked hesitant when she realized they were serious, but she didn't tighten up or anything. Instead, she kept things casual, and kept walking backwards on the sidewalk towards town.  
  
"Skipping, playing hooky, you name it," Eric answered, gray eyes sparkling. "It's more fun then school and only half the work - well, until grades come out, that is. But then you always manage to change the subject and get away with it - if you're good,… it takes a little practice though."  
  
"But I've never-"  
  
"Come on, there's a first time for everything, and you need to live a little, you've always been too shy anyway." Jess came over and put a hand on her arm, stopping her. "I mean, we're not gonna do the stupid "peer pressure" thing on you, we just wanted to know if you'd ever thought about it before, ever dreamed about it or something."  
  
Loretta cast her a knowing glance.  
  
"Of course I've thought about it," she spread her hands emphatically. "What school-age kid hasn't for that   
matter. You make it sound like it's the most wonderful dream I could possibly have. Speaking of which, I've also dreamed of becoming a digimon tamer - and you both know how realistic that goal is too." She smiled at this, realizing just how strange it really sounded.  
  
"Ya, well you only live once, you know?" Eric nodded down the hill they were now ascending toward a side dirt trail that led off into the bushes. "Please come, the lake will be warmer today, let's take a little field trip and at least dunk Jess-"  
  
"Hey," Jess cuffed him affectionately, "no fair. You sure you don't wanna try this thing, Lori?"  
  
Loretta shook her head softly. "I don't think my parents would take the idea of me skipping as lightly as you guys describe it."  
  
"Ok then, I guess. See ya around! Better yet, see ya at three. I'll drop by and we can battle cards or something." With that, Eric went racing back down the hill, Jess trying to overtake him with long strides before he got to the half-hidden trail.  
  
Lori stopped moving backwards and watched her two best friends in the entire universe race off to have the time of their lives. It was hard like that sometimes, being such polar opposites with those she really cared about. She told them both everything, and they did the same. But inside they were as different form her as night and day.  
  
Silently, she scuffled the toe of her right sneaker on the cement and glanced over at her watch. School had started three minutes ago, she was already skipping.  
  
She pulled out her Spanish book from under one arm, looking at the paper cover. Eric and Jess had helped her decorate it with a large picture of the Renamon from Tamers and a curled up, sleeping Guilmon. That would be her digimon…a guilmon, or even better, a renamon.  
  
Why did Eric and Jess always get to have all the fun? And what was the point of going to dumb school anyway today, or ever for that matter? She was failing anyway because she never bothered to do homework. Why do homework, which seemed pretty senseless at the time, when there was always something of interest to scope out in town or the woods on the same day?  
  
She looked down at her Spanish book again, realizing that she had left her homework on her dresser at home.  
  
'Well, so much for that effort.'  
  
Jess and Eric had almost reached the bottom of the hill. Loretta shook a few strands of golden brown hair out of her eyes and sighed. Perhaps it was time for something new anyway. Finding approval for that question somewhere inside she stuffed her Spanish book into her backpack and dashed down the hill after her receding friends.  
  
"Hey guys WAIT UP! I wanna come too!"  
  
Eric turned around, laughing up at her as he tried to catch his breath.  
  
"About time! Hurry up, we'll show you the secret group meeting place that Jess helped me pick out!"  
  
They stopped and waited for her at the bottom of the hill, then received her with a few playful comments and a brief tussle. Finally they moved onto the trail ahead, advancing single-file, and laughing about something that only they would understand.  
  
  
"Let's talk about something, anything-I'm bored already." Jess turned to Loretta and Eric now that they were walking together again, and not in a careful line.  
  
Around them the trail had opened up under the long-needled pines and glossy-leafed birches, a thick mat of dead needles and brown leaves coating the area between each tree. The forest was now nothing more then an elaborate maze for the three sixth graders, their voices and the clipped songs of chickadees the only sounds for miles.  
  
"Nah, I like the quiet." Eric looked around him at the shafts of golden sunlight. They streamed through the holes in the dense vegetation overhead and drenched the group in pools of light.  
  
"Well, I don't," Lori elbowed him, "let's play tag or something, we've got the whole darn forest today, and I haven't had one moment of the "supposed" rush that you insist skipping is."  
  
"Oh, that's a baby game! Anyway - let's play something that at least fits our level of maturity," Jess added.  
  
"Ya, like what….Digimon Hide, Seek and Tag?" Lori shrugged her shoulders at them both.  
  
Jess nodded, "now that sounds like a plan."  
  
"You are not serious," Lori added. "I was only joking. That game is probably the stupidest idea that Eric has ever invented in a long line of really bad ideas."  
  
"Hey, I heard that!"  
  
"Well, Mr. I Heard That - you get to be dorkmon, and-" Jess reached her hand out to touch his shoulder, "you're it!"  
  
Loretta watched Jess run off giggling loudly, Eric spinning around at the same time and tapping her on the shoulder before she could react.  
  
"Sorry," he cried, "-looks like you get to be "it" now! See ya renamon!"  
  
Loretta leapt off after him, deciding that he might be easier to catch then the already out-of-range Jess. Basically, she had always felt that the game was just a really strange way to waste time. Digimon really had nothing to do with it at all. You just called someone by a digimon name, touched them, and then they were "it". The trick was though, with this game, to zero-in on one person and chase them because if you lost everybody they could just hide and make your job even more impossible.  
  
So Lori was lost in this thought when she tripped over a root and fell. Eric was so far ahead and Jess already gone, that neither one of them heard the sharp thud as her skull connected with a cold, gray rock.  
  
For the eternity of time in which she fell, Loretta felt like crying out, or jumping away, or doing any number of things that she knew she didn't have time to do. So, instead, she hit the rock without doing anything. Her hands slid beneath her a split second too late, and the world turned to nothing but darkness.  
  
  
"Jess, Eric, you guys there?" Lori pulled herself to her feet, head throbbing, and wiped a streak of mud off her left cheek. The forest was quiet now but for a raven croaking in a tree above her, and a young doe, who, startled at her apparent re-animation sprang up stiff and bolted from the open.  
  
Evidently, she decided, her friends were too far away to have heard. Anyone who didn't know them would have naturally assumed that they left her to fend for herself. However, since she had spent most of her recent waking life with them both she knew that they would never have left her injured and unconscious in the middle of the woods.  
  
"OK, I give up, please come out!" She started to walk, no, limp was more like it, in the direction that she knew would likely lead to the lake, the pain jarring her leg letting her know that it was probably sprained pretty bad. She judged, by the sun still slanting lazily down at her, that it was still early morning, so she probably hadn't been out that long. Still, she was a little dizzy, and the feeling worried her. She needed to find someone who could help her get home, and soon.  
  
"Hey anybody….can you hear me?! I need help!"  
  
She scanned the area slowly, stopping when she noticed an overhang in a pile of rocks off to her left. They were clumped together in much the shape of a well-worn mound, moss, lichen and mud coating their many surfaces. Without a second thought Lori stumbled toward them, leaning on tree trunks for support as she went, finally resting her muddy hands on the topmost boulder.  
  
'Some luck I've had today - can't even skip properly.'   
  
She remained supported against the boulder until the pain had subsided enough to allow her to move around with only a little discomfort, and the pounding in her head was only a dull ache. Even then she didn't put her full weight on the injured ankle. Instead, she looked out over the boulder mound again, suddenly seeing it for what it really was.  
  
'It's not a pile of rocks - it's an entrance, to, um….a cave.'  
  
Yes, she realized, among the moist strands of hanging moss at one end, there was definitely an entrance of some sort. It was barely visible under all the wear and age, but it still seemed interesting in any event. At the very least worth one look.  
  
She moved over to it and leaned down on her knees. It wasn't at her normal eye level, but instead rose only about two feet from the ground up. All around it was bordered so randomly by boulders that it looked natural, and not built by anything but the elements. Pulling the moss aside from the entrance she peered in, then got down on her knees and scooted a few paces forward.  
  
"This - is interesting."  
  
The cave's tunnel within sloped downward, then opened up, disappearing into darkness.   
  
"I wonder if-"  
  
But whatever she really had been wondering never did get realized, because at that moment, she scooted one more inch forward, and felt the ground disappear from underneath her knees. She tried to pull back, overbalanced, and fell forward instead, tumbling down a shaft directly below her that she had not seen in the tunnel's darkness.  
  
Looking back at the event, she really can't remember much. A falling feeling maybe, and total darkness, darker then that which occurs during the moment of a total solar eclipse.  
  
Then, a strange tingling, and a feeling that could be described only as falling up.   
  
There was a bright flash, and Loretta tumbled out onto the sand and bone-dry earth, coughing at the sudden eruption of dust around her where she landed.  
  
"Man, what just happened?" She picked herself up and dusted off her pant legs, her ankle hardly hurting at all anymore. Not that it mattered, she had bigger things to contend with at this point.  
  
Like the fact that she had suddenly been thrown through some kind of strange portal and ended up in what appeared to be a real-life no-man's-land.  
  
With a sigh of confusion she scanned the area about her slowly. Sand, sand, and - oh look, more sand, whipped by in every direction. All around her big, oddly-shaped plateaus and rock formations dotted the horizon, the line between blue sky and tawny sand nothing more than a hazy, far-off band of gray shifting nothingness.  
  
She looked up into the sky at this point, and straight at a greenish-turquoise ball of-- "something" revolving slowly far above, data streams lancing out from it to strike at the barren earth below almost savagely.  
  
"No…..it can't be…."  
  
She suddenly knew where she was, but her brain refused to believe that it could possibly be true.  
  
"This….isn't possible, I mean, not in the real world, not for me!"  
  
But the greenish data-looking ball, as she well knew, was the real world. A real world which she was no longer a part of. Instead, she was somehow outside of the real world and in….  
  
"This is the Digital World. It can't be anything else, I've watched Tamer's episodes over and over at least a dozen times, and this is what the basic world looked like. The same basic world that everything started out on, before the digimon all went their separate ways, and created their own realms."  
  
Caught up in the fact that she actually appeared to suddenly be in a place that she had wished to see with all her heart since the first tamer set foot on it, she took a stride forward, skirting some small, yellowing shrubs.  
  
"Wow, it's more then what I expected…I mean, there's nothing really to look at right now, but there's so much out there that I can explore! It's real…." She paused, that little rational voice in the back of her mind suddenly coming back into play. "But of course none of this can possibly be real, I'm either still sleeping or that rock -- ah!"  
  
"Hello!"  
  
Out of the bushes that she had just been stepping to avoid a little white digimon about the size of a small rabbit, with huge emerald eyes and rather large, purple-tipped ears, peered at her. The expression on it's face was absolute joy, it's smile wide and innocent, like that of an animal or very small child.  
  
"Hi to you!" It continued, jumping all the way out of the bushes and landing with a little thump at her feet. It looked up into her face, eyes shining.  
  
"Well, aren't you gonna say hi, it's very impolite not to. Are you sick? Because your mouth's all open and you look kinda white-colored."  
  
"Calumon?!" Loretta managed to shut her mouth and regarded the little digimon with a mixture of love and humor. She had always wanted to meet Calumon. He was a little digimon that never seemed to cease talking about something. But he was seriously too cute for anyone to tell him to be quiet without honestly feeling bad about it later.   
"Hi Calumon!"  
  
"Well hi again to you!" The small fuzzy digimon seemed happy to suddenly have someone to entertain, almost as if he hadn't seen anyone else in a very long time.  
  
"Can I ask you something?" She bent down in the dirt so that they could both see each other better. Calumon came a little closer, listening.  
  
"Sure, I love questions." His ears folded in on themselves. He seemed to be paying so much attention to her by the look on his face that she had to hold back a laugh.  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
Calumon looked perplexed. "Here."  
  
"Where is here?"  
  
"Here!" Calumon suddenly gave her a stubborn frown.  
  
"Here where?" This was starting to confuse her.  
  
"Here is here!"  
  
"As in, here?"  
  
"Yep," Calumon smiled brightly again, as if the logic in that statement was too clear to be missed.  
  
"Oh, OK."  
  
"Can I ask you a question now?"  
  
Loretta shrugged. She had asked her question - not that she had gotten an answer, mind you, but why not?  
  
"Sure."  
  
Calumon sat down in the dust, leaning back on his little arms and twitching the tips of his feet, looking up at her.  
  
"Are you human?"  
  
Loretta laughed, "of course I am, haven't you ever seen a human before?"  
  
Calumon shook his head. "Humans never come here, but one is supposed to someday. It's part of the prophecy."  
  
"Prophecy?" This made no sense. The tamers had come to this version of the Digital World long before she had taken such a detour.  
  
"Yep, and since you're a human, and the first to come here, you must be part of the prophecy too, huh? Are you here to save us from all the icky stuff that keeps happening, huh, can you?"  
  
"Um - just what prophecy are you talking about?" Lori's brow creased and she shook her head, not understanding in the slightest.  
  
"The one about the Digital Light. The first human to come here is supposed to be the Digilight. They will come and save us all….at least, that's what the funny pictures say in the Prophecy Cave." Calumon danced circles in the sand, then weaved around for a second, completely dizzy.  
  
"Prophecy Cave - where? Can you show me?" She looked down at Calumon intently, still not really understanding what he could possibly be talking about. If this really was the Digital World, then the tamers or the digidestined should have shown up here at some point, making them the first humans. Unless this was somehow a different dimension of the Digital World or something.  
  
"Sure, come on, follow me! It's right over that little hill there!"   
  
Calumon pointed ahead of them at a little dune in the sand. Loretta could see over it easily, but she knew that for Calumon it must have seemed huge, even though he had called it "little".  
  
"You sure," she scanned the area, not noticing anything even remotely like a cave. "I don't see it."  
  
"Of course not, you don't know how to look properly!" Calumon giggled and jumped to his feet. "Follow me, I'll show you!"   
  
He hopped off over the dune, and Lori glanced back once more at the stone tunnel she had fallen from before following him, realizing that perhaps she had just gotten in far more trouble then skipping one day of school.  
  
  
Announcer Davis: Wow, who would have known that skipping class could lead to so much trouble, and the Digital World as well?! Looks like Lori isn't your average middle school rule breaker anymore, she's headed for the big leagues - or maybe just big trouble. But now that Calumon has shown up, maybe she'll finally get the adventure she's been craving? And just what's a Digital Light, of Digilight anyway? Find out next week on Digimon Tamers: The Shards of Hope.  
  
  
Author's note: Ok, if you've stuck with me this long, you're serious with this. Thank you, Muchas Gracias! I promise you that this is only a small cliffhanger in a long line of ones that will, according to my friends, get far worse. So the excitement hasn't even started yet, hang with me, and the next chapter will be better. I should be updating NEXT WEDNESDAY, so make sure to check back, I might even post a little early if I get the time to go over Chap. 2's second draft tomorrow. See ya later! Oh, and please take just a little time to review, I'd like to know what you like, don't like….and if you actually read it. It's a bit wordy for a digimon fanfic after all. 


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